Labouring under delusions - Village Magazine

44May 2015

IKE most Labour and Social

Democrat parties Labour was

originally established by the

Trade Unions to advance the

political interests of trade

unionists and workers generally. When

founded in  it had the joint name of

the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union

Congress. The British Liberal Govern-

ment had promised Home Rule. James

Connolly, James Larkin and William

O’Brien wanted Labour to play a full

role in the eagerly expected Irish

Parliament.

Most trade unions in the Republic are

aﬃliated to Labour, but most trade

unionists and workers voted for Sinn

Féin in the - period, in later

decades for Fianna Fáil, and these days

they are moving towards another Sinn

Féin again.

Labour’s failure to get the votes of its

natural working-class constituency is

due to its ”economism” and the percep-

tion that it has historically been

“anti-national”. The economism refers

to Labour purporting to concentrate on

seeking economic improvements for

workers, while leaving the big political

issues to the two “bourgeois” parties

that came from the - Civil War.

The anti-nationalism refers to the fact

that the main Irish political issue of the

past century has been the establish-

ment of an Irish State, maintaining that

State’s independence and sovereignty

and seeking Irish reuniﬁcation. Labour

has failed to make these issues its own

and left them instead to the same Civil

War parties and to various shades of

Republicanism.

James Connolly’s main contribution

to political thought was to show by his

writings and his participation in the

Easter Rising that Labour, the political

Left and people who claimed to be

socialists should seek to be the fore-

most advocates of national

independence – in that way winning

hegemony over the nation as a whole.

Sadly, his successors as Labour leaders

either did not understand him or failed

to follow him.

Labour opted not to contest the

hugely important  and  elec-

tions, the ﬁrst elections in which

women had the vote and which deter-

mined people’s politics for generations.

If in  Labour had opted to abstain

from Westminster as Sinn Féin had

pledged to do, it would have won for

itself an inﬂuential and possibly a

determining role in the dramatic events

that followed, leading to the establish-

ment of an Irish State. Belfast’s workers

were Unionists, Southern ones were

Nationalist. Labour sought to maintain

the organisational unity of the All-Ire-

land Trade Union Movement by ceding

the whole ﬁeld of politics to Sinn Féin.

As Peadar O’Donnell put it: “We lost the

whole of Ireland for the sake of Belfast”.

In the s when the Republican

Congress movement tried to push

Fianna Fáil in a more Republican and

anti-imperialist direction from the left,

Labour proclaimed that it stood for the

“Workers’ Republic” and would have no

truck with any mere “Republic” that

was not socialist. When that moment

had passed, it hastily dropped the

slogan “Workers’ Republic” in face of

criticism by the Church authorities of

the day, which saw that as communism.

For most of the seventy years since

the end of World War  the Labour

Party under successive leaders – Wil-

liam Norton, Brendan Corish, Michael

O’Leary, Dick Spring, Ruairi Quinn, Pat

Rabbite and Eamon Gilmore – has been

said to be more “the mudguard of Fine

Gael than the vanguard of the proletar-

iat”. By forming a whole series of

coalitions with Fine Gael, the more con-

servative of the Republic’s two main

parties, Labour has periodically revived

Fine Gael by putting it into government,

while enabling Fianna Fáil to renew

itself in opposition. Labour spokesmen

like to deplore the dominance of Irish

The reliable mudguard of Fine Gael.

By Anthony Coughlan

Labouring

under

delusions

POLITICS Labour Party

Labour’s

leaders could

not wait.

Better to

be Tánaiste

today than

potentially

Taoiseach

tomorrow

“

May 2015 45

politics since the s by the so-called

“Civil War parties”. They do not realise

that it is Labour’s own policy choices

that have been primarily responsible

for this.

I recall putting this point to the late

Noel Browne, who was Minister for

Health in the ﬁrst such Coalition, that

of -. “You are quite right” ,he

said. “I remember James Dillon saying

to me shortly after that Government

was formed: ‘Last year we had only a

few dozen people at the Fine Gael Ard

Fheis. This year the hall was packed to

the door.’ I then realised”, said Browne,

“that what we had done was revive Fine

Gael”.

When that particular coalition col-

lapsed over the Mother and Child

scheme in  Fine Gael increased its

ﬁrst-preference vote, while Labour and

other smaller coalition parties were

devastated. The same pattern has

repeated itself several times since. The

political law of coalition government

seems to be that the larger party gets

the credit for whatever good voters see

the coalition as doing, while the smaller

party gets the blame for Coalition

failures.

And the reason for this successive

love aﬀair between Labour and Fine

Gael? Sean O’Casey put it aptly when he

said of Labour’s participation in that

- Coalition: “Their posteriors

were aching for the velvet seats of

oﬃce”.

If Labour had stayed aloof from Fine

Gael following the  election it

would be well positioned now to become

the largest party in the State in the

upcoming general election. But its lead-

ers could not wait. Better to be Tánaiste

today than potentially Taoiseach

tomorrow.

There was one moment when

Labour’s trade union aﬃliates asserted

themselves in a national direction –

when Ireland’s membership of the then

European Economic Community (EEC)

was being decided in . The late

Michael Mullen, a former Labour TD

who as a young man had been in the

IRA, led the ITGWU (now SIPTU) and

through it the Irish Congress of Trade

Unions, in opposition to EEC

membership for Ireland. This forced the

Labour Party leadership reluctantly to

go along.

I remember the coordinating meet-

ings we had for that campaign. We used

to meet in Mullen’s oﬃce on the top

ﬂoor of Liberty Hall. Mullen and Ruairi

Roberts of the ICTU represented the

trade unions, Brendan Halligan and

Justin Keating the Labour Party, and

Raymond Crotty and I the non-party

EEC opponents. Then following the May

 Accession Treaty referendum,

with its big vote in favour of EEC mem-

bership, Labour fell again into the arms

of Fine Gael. Various jobs were par-

celled out in the  Coalition

Government and in the decades since

Labour has emulated Fine Gael and

Fianna Fáil in embracing supranation-

alism and protesting its europhilia.

A break in Labour’s love-aﬀair with

Fine Gael occurred in  when Dick

Spring coalesced brieﬂy with Fianna

Fáil, making Albert Reynolds Taoi-

seach. Having over  Dáil seats

between the two parties gave Reynolds

the conﬁdence to back the IRA peace

process vigorously, as a Fine Gael-La-

bour coalition under John Bruton would

never have done. Then in  Dick

Spring withdrew his support for Rey-

nolds on the pretext that Labour voters

were unhappy with its involvement with

Fianna Fáil. By changing sides in the

Dáil Labour put Fine Gael into oﬃce

over the Harry Whelehan aﬀair without

the need for another election.

What is left of Labour’s radicalism

today? In recent decades its various

male leaders have taken to wearing red

ties when they appear on public occa-

sions. They presumably see this as

symbolising something.

As regards policy Labour has com-

pensated for its eschewal of radicalism

in economics by spearheading what one

might call the “life-style politics” of the

liberal agenda. This appeals to some

amongst Ireland’s middle classes, but

tends to leave working-class people

cold. Currently this means Labour

advocating gay marriage, a policy it has

succeeded in foisting on Fine Gael to

help cement the current Coalition. One

wonders what James Connolly, who

strongly opposed the “free love” doc-

trines of August Bebel and Daniel De

Leon when he lived in the United States,

would have thought of this latest devel-

opment in the party he helped found in

Clonmel just over a century ago. •

Labour has

compensated

for its

eschewal of

radicalism in

economics by

spearheading

the “life-style

politics” of the

liberal agenda

tending to

leave working-

class people

cold

“

Anthony Coughlan is

Associate Professor

Emeritus of Social

Policy at Trinity

College Dublin